Hello!
The comments on this profile are unclaimed and thus are unverified.
Do they belong to you? Claim these comments.
David Churbuck
Is this you? Claim Profile »
2 months ago
in Let Beached Whales Die on AttentionMax
Interesting and contrarian point of view, but something that has troubled me for years since seeing postcards from the turn of the 19th-20th century showing massive pilot whale (blackfish) strandings inside of Cape Cod Bay (where many occur today).
Now the Cape has its own "Stranding Network" -- a great community service that helps rehab cold-stunned turtles, de-tangle right whales from fishing gear, and ... as you say, return beached whales to the water -- only to see them return.
I think a driver of the service mentality is the belief, perhaps guilt driven, that man is responsible for the strandings -- submarine sonar, pollution -- I saw in the local paper an article about the restoration of an injured swan to a local pond, but swans are considered invasive species in the Northeast.
It's human nature to be both cruel and kind to animals, but you hit a fascinating point of when that kindness is out of synch with the natural reality and order of the world.
Now the Cape has its own "Stranding Network" -- a great community service that helps rehab cold-stunned turtles, de-tangle right whales from fishing gear, and ... as you say, return beached whales to the water -- only to see them return.
I think a driver of the service mentality is the belief, perhaps guilt driven, that man is responsible for the strandings -- submarine sonar, pollution -- I saw in the local paper an article about the restoration of an injured swan to a local pond, but swans are considered invasive species in the Northeast.
It's human nature to be both cruel and kind to animals, but you hit a fascinating point of when that kindness is out of synch with the natural reality and order of the world.
1 reply
4 months ago
in Switching Time Machine drives easy but not quick on Gravitational Pull
Aaron,
Good post. I'm in the midst of moving and consolidating everything onto a WD MyBookWorld. Not sure of your thoughts, but I am concerned now that all my media and backups are converging on one device, about "how to backup the backup". Any thoughts on online storage services?
Good post. I'm in the midst of moving and consolidating everything onto a WD MyBookWorld. Not sure of your thoughts, but I am concerned now that all my media and backups are converging on one device, about "how to backup the backup". Any thoughts on online storage services?
1 reply
ampressman
I have had a great online backup experience with Mozy - been using it
for almost 2 year now. For the amount of data I have backed up (almost
150 GB -- which includes media files and RAW photo images), it's
cheaper than Amazon S3 and the backup software is simple and reliable.
Plenty of encryption as well (and the truly paranoid can encrypt with
their own key). I also like that it's owned by EMC, a solid company
where backup services are a core product offering.
I blogged about my experiences with Mozy in more detail in December (http://gravitationalpull.net/wp/?p=553
) and April (http://gravitationalpull.net/wp/?p=279) last year.
I also do a once-a-year burn everything important to DVDs and send
them to my brother in Connecticut for my redundant offsite backup.
Maybe I should start leaving a 2nd copy at my mother-in-law's in
Osterville in case a freak volcano takes out West Hartford?
for almost 2 year now. For the amount of data I have backed up (almost
150 GB -- which includes media files and RAW photo images), it's
cheaper than Amazon S3 and the backup software is simple and reliable.
Plenty of encryption as well (and the truly paranoid can encrypt with
their own key). I also like that it's owned by EMC, a solid company
where backup services are a core product offering.
I blogged about my experiences with Mozy in more detail in December (http://gravitationalpull.net/wp/?p=553
) and April (http://gravitationalpull.net/wp/?p=279) last year.
I also do a once-a-year burn everything important to DVDs and send
them to my brother in Connecticut for my redundant offsite backup.
Maybe I should start leaving a 2nd copy at my mother-in-law's in
Osterville in case a freak volcano takes out West Hartford?
7 months ago
in Are you a Young Professional on Cape Cod who wants to stay here? on Cape Cod Focus
Once I was a young professional (being 50 this year that no longer applies) on Cape Cod, moving here from Boston in 1991 at the age of 33 to raise my kids in a special place far from the angry suburbs. Two things stuck with me.
1. The retired mega-exec who questioned my professional integrity by living in a sleepy seaside village and telecommuting by saying, "How can you be a fireman if you don't work near the fire?" That stung, but over time I realized it was a generational thing. Real breadwinners went to an office.
2. The realization that if you want to work a white collar job on Cape Cod you have to either bring the job with you, or find a job that will pay you to come to it. I basically have had to live a good percentage of my life away from my family and in a hotel room in NYC, Zurich, Raleigh, or Beijing to bring home the bacon. There's simply no large scale tech employers on the Cape.
Which begs the question: should there be? What would lure a non-manufacturing, high intellectual capital based employer to Cape Cod? There really not a lot of higher ed here to act as a magnet the way Duke and UNC and NCSU make the Research Triangle a desirable incubator of talent. Cost of living sucks here. Technical infrastructure (who wants to bet FIOS never comes to the Cape?) is lacking. Other than Wood Hole and the science community and the satellite opportunities that spun off from that marine science focus -- there's not much going on here.
So the question should be how to attract and support telecommuters -- to get white collar professionals working on the Cape, supported by a good commuter rail system to get them into the city when they need to make a face to face meeting (with wifi on the train) -- with a decent airport feeding the major hubs in Providence and Boston. With decent broadband (sorry, DSL and cable won't cut it for heavy professional use).
The rest is self-evident -- this is a very attractive place to work, raise a family, and thrive. Invest in the schools, the arts and the technical infrastructure and the demographic you want will come here to raise their families.
1. The retired mega-exec who questioned my professional integrity by living in a sleepy seaside village and telecommuting by saying, "How can you be a fireman if you don't work near the fire?" That stung, but over time I realized it was a generational thing. Real breadwinners went to an office.
2. The realization that if you want to work a white collar job on Cape Cod you have to either bring the job with you, or find a job that will pay you to come to it. I basically have had to live a good percentage of my life away from my family and in a hotel room in NYC, Zurich, Raleigh, or Beijing to bring home the bacon. There's simply no large scale tech employers on the Cape.
Which begs the question: should there be? What would lure a non-manufacturing, high intellectual capital based employer to Cape Cod? There really not a lot of higher ed here to act as a magnet the way Duke and UNC and NCSU make the Research Triangle a desirable incubator of talent. Cost of living sucks here. Technical infrastructure (who wants to bet FIOS never comes to the Cape?) is lacking. Other than Wood Hole and the science community and the satellite opportunities that spun off from that marine science focus -- there's not much going on here.
So the question should be how to attract and support telecommuters -- to get white collar professionals working on the Cape, supported by a good commuter rail system to get them into the city when they need to make a face to face meeting (with wifi on the train) -- with a decent airport feeding the major hubs in Providence and Boston. With decent broadband (sorry, DSL and cable won't cut it for heavy professional use).
The rest is self-evident -- this is a very attractive place to work, raise a family, and thrive. Invest in the schools, the arts and the technical infrastructure and the demographic you want will come here to raise their families.
1 reply
capecoder
David - I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about telecommuting and rail service.
You are also correct that the scientific community in Woods Hole has spun off a number of interesting companies. There are others, though, like Backoffice Associates, Convention Data Services, Cape Cod Healthcare and Onset Computer to name a few who employ in the aggregate hundreds of people in highly skilled professions unrelated to marine sciences. In other words, there definitely is "something going on here", even if it's on a smaller scale than we might like.
I believe that for many of these organizations, the CEOs and founders chose to start businesses here for many of the same reasons you and I enjoy the Cape. We do have high utility costs (the second highest in the US), but our property taxes are pretty reasonable, so on par, I'd be surprised if it's more expensive to run a business here than, say, in Wellesley or Needham. Thus, if a Cape company's sales are national or international in scope, then that company should be able to pay wages on a national scale.
I've long suspected that the reason we haven't attracted and retained companies with high-paying jobs is twofold. First, I don't think our Chambers of Commerce have shown an interest. If you look at their Boards, for example, you'll see that the tourism industry is overweighted. Our Chambers have not been aggressive about presenting the Cape as a good place to start a business: rather, their "message" is just that the Cape is a good place to go on vacation.
The second reason is more controversial and I'd be happy to correspond with you about it off-line.
You are also correct that the scientific community in Woods Hole has spun off a number of interesting companies. There are others, though, like Backoffice Associates, Convention Data Services, Cape Cod Healthcare and Onset Computer to name a few who employ in the aggregate hundreds of people in highly skilled professions unrelated to marine sciences. In other words, there definitely is "something going on here", even if it's on a smaller scale than we might like.
I believe that for many of these organizations, the CEOs and founders chose to start businesses here for many of the same reasons you and I enjoy the Cape. We do have high utility costs (the second highest in the US), but our property taxes are pretty reasonable, so on par, I'd be surprised if it's more expensive to run a business here than, say, in Wellesley or Needham. Thus, if a Cape company's sales are national or international in scope, then that company should be able to pay wages on a national scale.
I've long suspected that the reason we haven't attracted and retained companies with high-paying jobs is twofold. First, I don't think our Chambers of Commerce have shown an interest. If you look at their Boards, for example, you'll see that the tourism industry is overweighted. Our Chambers have not been aggressive about presenting the Cape as a good place to start a business: rather, their "message" is just that the Cape is a good place to go on vacation.
The second reason is more controversial and I'd be happy to correspond with you about it off-line.
9 months ago
in Publishers: Don’t use crappy ad links on Mathew's comments
Correction -- I was long gone from Forbes.com when they experimented with IntelliTxt/Vibrant. Glad we agree.
1 reply
mathewi
My mistake, David -- thanks for letting me know.
essay, but I I'll do it here now. It is my understanding that many years ago
-- say pre-1940s Western values -- human guilt would have been driven less
by humane treatment and more about waste. For example, the norm would've
been to quickly kill a beached whale to produce oil or food. To do
otherwise, would've been wasteful. My analogy in my essay tied beached
whales to modern day industries and institutions. I firmly believe our
attempts to avoid gore and pain (for short-term humanity?) often brings with
it tremendous waste in the end.